I had thoughts about the death count since the Marineford War. The shows aspect has changed countless of times during its whole run and manga releases.
In the beginning, Luffy had a few rookies Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Sanji and casted on for an adventure against other pirates to get to the Grand Line.
Then it changes when the Government had some kind of evil plot and secrets that they had to hide for thousands of years and luffy with his even bigger crew Include Chopper and Robin were basically outlaws and trying to run away from the world government & marines ever since crocodile the first warlords and the first Logia user in the series which changes the aspect of Devil fruit users and certain Abilities that were left unknown in the series so far.
The story changes yet again when the crew went to save robin which shows a big chunk of the evil plot that the government hid for a while, plus show their true intentions and how brutal they were killing a boat full of civilians just to hide a secrets and a mere child and now Luffy and the crew now with Franky are against the world government and want to take them on they survived the fucking Buster Call
They story got a turn to a different angle of mythical evens when they add brook to the crew in which he is only a skeleton with awesome en guard sword skills. and they must fight against yet another warlord Gecko who controls shadows and makes zombies his slaves. not to mention persona a ghost princess who control ghost that can make you depressed lol.
Now lets move all the way up to when the Strawhats split up. The dream was put on hold when they wanted to get stronger meanwhile Luffy had other plans and wanted to save Ace by then, the animation changed, the color of the show changed, the graphics and the whole comedy behind one piece changed.
Up in the New world the dream was yet again put on hold when Luffy's new plan is to defeat "all" the 4 Emperors in the New world, but that was put on hold because of Donflmingo having the Meru Meru fruit.
Overall, basically each Arc changes the story dramatically. Hope this helps 